In Italy, one can recruit a lot of those. Unemployment is at 11.1% and there’s a millions-strong industrial reserve army of faux-freelance, part-timers, “coordinated collaborators”, “project-contractors”, “leased staff” and many other forms of non-standard employees. Especially since the infamous Jobs Act heralded by the government of former PM Matteo Renzi, among young workers temp jobs accounts for 50% of employment and they are up 7% since Sept 2017.

Take-away message: Amazon corporate takeover of Italy is as much a matter of labor policy as it is of data politics. As long as the unions continue to focus on the former while neglecting the latter, their action is doomed to be ineffective. Case in point: after dominating Black Friday sales, Amazon’s shares are up 2% and Jeff Bezos is still world’s wealthiest man. So Amazon Italia just gave a giant middle-finger to workers by cancelling the meeting with unions and rescheduling it for after Xmas…